Social Networking Watch

Pandora Raises $35 Million

TECH CRUNCH -- July 10 -- Pandora, the Internet streaming radio service has raised a new $35m round of funding. Pandora had previously raised slightly over $20 million, but the last round was in 2005. This new funding comes when Pandora expects to be profitable by next year, and is coming off its best quarter in terms of ad sales yet. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Pandora Has Officially Been Saved

TECH CRUNCH -- July 7 -- After two years of uncertainty, Pandora’s future has finally been secured. For those not familiar with what was going on, basically the streaming rates for Internet radio were in danger of being raised to levels that would have made it very hard for companies like Pandora to stay afloat. The key part of the resolution involves SoundExchange agreeing to a 40-50% reduction in the per-song-per-listener rates. In exchange, Pandora is giving up a 25% share of its U.S. revenue. This agreement runs through 2015. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Pandora Radio Starts Serving Audio Ads

TECH CRUNCH -- Jan 20 -- Pandora Radio, the personalized radio station that recommends songs based on its Music Genome Project, has started serving audio ads. We've confirmed that the ads are appearing on Pandora's main web-based service, and are trying to find out if the ads will begin appearing on Pandora's iPhone application, which was the most-downloaded application on the App Store for 2008. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Pandora Cuts 14% Of Its Staff

TECH CRUNCH -- Oct 17 -- Music-streaming service Pandora joins the growing list of startups laying off employees to survive in a worsening economy. The company let go 20 people yesterday. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Interview With Last.fm Founder Richard Jones: Part 2

READ WRITE WEB -- Oct 1 -- Here is the 1st part of the interview with Last.fm Founder Richard Jones. We wanted to find out last.fm's reaction to the launch of MySpace Music and the rise of Imeem.

Q: What differentiates last.fm from other services?
A: The navigation through the mass of music is now the priority for music fans. We have a unique recommendation system to help our users find stuff suited to their taste.

Q: Where last.fm sits in terms of licensing with the 4 majors and independents?
A: We have music from 3 of the majors, and renegotiations with Warner are ongoing. We ensure all labels and artists are paid when their music is streamed on the site.

Q: How crucial do you think mobile apps will be when competing against the likes of MySpace, Imeem and Pandora? Do you think you have any advantages over your rivals in this area?
A: Mobile is hugely important to us. At the moment the iPhone dominates, and our only competition there is really Pandora, which is limited to the US whereas our app is available in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain and France, with more countries to come.
FULL INTERVIEW @ READ WRITE WEB

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Perhaps Pandora Must Be Our Sacrificial Lamb

TECH CRUNCH -- Aug 16 -- Pandora would shut down rather than continue to pay exorbitant fees to play music to their listeners. Radio stations pay different rates depending on how they broadcast music. Terrestrial stations (normal FM/AM stations) pay nothing. Satellite stations pay approximately 1.6 cents per hour per listener. By 2010, Pandora and other Internet radio stations, which have few lobbying resources, must pay 2.91 cents. Pandora says they're already paying 70% of their $25m in yearly revenues in royalty fees, and it is driving them out of business. Other Internet radio stations are even worse off. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Social.FM In The Deadpool

TECH CRUNCH -- Aug 4 -- Social.FM, the three year old startup which helped users discover music through their social network in a similar manner to Last.fm, has shut down.  Social.FM was the re-branded Mercora, which launched in June 2005 and raised $5 million from Norwest Venture Partners.  Competition from Pandora and Last.fm made it change its strategy towards a social network. Social.FM may also have suffered from the huge jump in royalty rates for webcasting music. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH

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Last.FM, Jango, Pandora Trounce Music Discovery

PBS -- Dec 3 -- With Internet radio "music discovery" or "social radio" users can listen to their favorite music whenever they want. The biggest music discovery is Last.FM, which was recently acquired by CBS for $280 million. Based on user's music, Last.FM starts to form profiles of their tastes and everything they listen to gets broadcast to the Last.FM community. Jango is less feature-rich than Last.FM. Pandora is easy to get started with and available with no downloads. Unlike Jango, Pandora has a more international selection of music. iLike is very popular with the Facebook set. iLike is similar to Last.FM, it's based on user's iTunes music collection. MyStrands is a desktop app. which provides the ability to organize "music parties" and synchronize user's iPods to the service. Mog.com is like a music magazine, MySpace and Last.FM all rolled into one. FULL ARTICLE @ PBS

Soldiers Lose MySpace, YouTube Privileges

TECH NEWS WORLD -- May 14 -- Citing security and bandwidth concerns, the military has blocked its computers from accessing many popular social networking Web sites. Military personnel are still allowed to access the sites; they just won't be able to log on using the government's network. However, for many stationed overseas, that's the only network they have access to. The directive bars Defense Department computers from accessing MySpace.com, YouTube.com, Metacafe, iFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV.com, 1.fm, Live365 and Photobucket. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH NEWS WORLD

MOG.com Launches

CONTRA COSTA TIMES -- Apr 1 -- MOG.com has launched after 8 months in beta, to help users find desired music quickly by sorting through users' YouTube music videos and iTunes libraries and offer recommendations of songs, albums, music reviews and even blogs.  he scanning software was developed by Gracenote of Emeryville, which licenses it to MOG.com in exchange for a stake in the startup. Musicmatch.com, Slacker.com, Pandora.com, Last.fm, Soundflavor.com and Goombah.com are competitors. MOG.com is free, has $1.4 million in startup capital and plans to support itself on advertising. FULL ARTICLE @ CONTRA COSTA TIMES